Judge restores wolves’ protection

In a decision that has conservation groups howling with happiness, a federal judge on Thursday restored Endangered Species Act protection to gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.

Judge Donald Molloy found that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred when it removed wolves from endangered species listing in Idaho and Montana but left them on the list in Wyoming.

“The Endangered Species Act does not allow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list only part of a ‘species’ as endangered,” Molloy wrote.

The judge said that “delisting the gray wolf (in Idaho and Montana) must be set aside because, though it may be a pragmatic solution to a difficult biological issue, it is not a legal one.”

Wolves were exterminated in the Rockies early in the 20th Century. They gained protection in 1974 under the Endangered Species Act.

What the Natural Resources Defense Council calls “a remarkable recovery” has taken place since the mid-1990′s.

Wolves reintroduced themselves in western Montana, migrating south from Canada in the Flathead River valley. Then-U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt helped release wolves in Yellowstone National Park late in 1994.

Visitors to the fabled Lamar Valley in Yellowstone have been able to stand atop bluffs and watch wolves stalk their prey. The Druid wolf pack was featured on the PBS program “Nature.”

The latest counts show 843 or more wolves in Idaho, 524 in Montana and 320 in Wyoming. Gray wolves are also found in Washington, with a pack living in the upper Wolf Creek section of the Methow Valley.

“Canis lupus” still has sworn enemies, notably Idaho Gov. Butch Otter. “I’m prepared to bid for the first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” Otter said last fall after Fish and Wildlife removed protection.

But Molloy’s decision means planned wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana must be put on hold, at least until Fish and Wildlife develops a protection plan for the wolf population in Wyoming.

As Idaho suspended wolf tab sales on Thursday, Otter pronounced himself “thoroughly disappointed and frustrated.” Others took a different view.

“Had the federal government prevailed in the lawsuit, real wolf recovery would have been set back for perhaps decades: Worse, the precedent of the federal government making listing and de-listing decisions for endangered species based on political boundaries rather than science would have crippled the Interior Department’s future management of the Endangered Species Act,” said Roger Schlickelsen, president of Friends of Wildlife.